Skip to product information
1 of 1

Summer Beam Books

The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design by Galen Cranz

The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design by Galen Cranz

Regular price $10.00 USD
Regular price Sale price $10.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.

The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design by Galen Cranz

ISBN: 0393319555    EAN: 9780393319552
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
US SRP: $21.95 US  
Binding: Paperback
Copyright Date: 2000
Pub Date: January 01, 2000
Physical Info: 0.7" H x 8.9" L x 6.0" W (0.95 lbs) 288 pages

Perhaps no other object of our daily environment has had the enduring cultural significance of the ever-present chair, unconsciously yet forcefully shaping the physical and social dimensions of our lives. With over ninety illustrations, this book traces the history of the chair as we know it from its crudest beginnings up through the modern office variety. Drawing on anecdotes, literary references, and famous designs, Galen Cranz documents our ongoing love affair with the chair and how its evolution has been governed not by a quest for comfort or practicality, but by the designation of status.Relating much of the modern era's rampant back pain to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle spent in traditional seating, Cranz goes beyond traditional ergonomic theory to formulate new design principles that challenge the way we think and live. A farsighted and innovative approach to our most intimate habitat, this book offers guidelines that will assist readers in choosing a chair-and designing a lifestyle-that truly suits our bodies.

Galen Cranz is professor of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley.
View full details